fact that all the Continental nations look upon our present peace as but
transitory, momentary; and on the Crimean war as but the prologue to a
fearful drama—all the more fearful because none knows its purpose, its
plot, which character will be assumed by any given actor, and, least of
all, the _dénouement_ of the whole. All that they feel and know is that
everything which has happened since 1848 has exasperated, not calmed, the
electric tension of the European atmosphere; that a rottenness, rapidly
growing intolerable alike ‘to God and the enemies of God,’ has eaten into
the vitals of Continental life; that their rulers know neither where they
are nor whither they are going, and only pray that things may last out
their time: all notes which one would interpret as proving the Continent
to be already ripe for subjection to some one devouring race of
conquerors, were there not a ray of hope in an expectation, even more
painful to our human pity, which is held by some of the wisest among the
Germans; namely, that the coming war will fast resolve into no struggle
between bankrupt monarchs and their respective armies, but a war between
nations themselves, an internecine war of opinions and of creeds. There
are wise Germans now who prophesy, with sacred tears, a second ‘Thirty
Years’ War,’ with all its frantic horrors, for their hapless country,
which has found two centuries too short a time wherein to recover from
the exhaustion of that first fearful scourge. Let us trust, if that war
shall beget its new Tillys and Wallensteins, it shall also beget its new
Gustavus Adolphus, and many another child of Light: but let us not hope
that we can stand by in idle comfort, and that when the overflowing
scourge passes by it shall not reach to us. Shame to us, were that our
destiny! Shame to us, were we to refuse our share in the struggles of
the human race, and to stand by in idle comfort while the Lord’s battles
are being fought. Honour to us, if in that day we have chosen for our
leaders, as our forefathers of the sixteenth century did, men who see the
work which God would have them do, and have hearts and heads to do it.
Honour to us, if we spend this transient lull, as our forefathers of the
sixteenth century did, in setting our house in order, in redressing every
grievance, reforming every abuse, knitting the hearts of the British
nation together by practical care and help between class and class, man
and man, governor and governed, that we may bequeath to our children, as
Henry the Eighth’s men did to theirs, a British national life, so united
and whole-hearted, so clear in purpose and sturdy in execution, so
trained to know the right side at the first glance and take it, that they
shall look back with love and honour upon us, their fathers, determined
to carry out, even to the death, the method which we have bequeathed to
them. Then, if God will that the powers of evil, physical and spiritual,
should combine against this land, as they did in the days of good Queen
Bess, we shall not have lived in vain; for those who, as in Queen Bess’s
days, thought to yoke for their own use a labouring ox, will find, as
then, that they have roused a lion from his den.
FOOTNOTES
{219} North British Review, No. LI., November 1856.—‘A History of
England, from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth.’ By J. A.
Froude, M.A., late Fellow of Exeter college, Oxford. London: J. W.
Parker and Son, West Strand. 2 vols. 1856.
{246} This article appeared in the _North British Review_.